Deism and rational religion were popular approaches to religion by philosophical thinkers during the Enlightenment. John Locke was one of the early proponents of this sort of approach to thinking about God. Deists (or we could say "God-ists") believed in God, but as a rather remote Being who had created the universe by his power and embedded in it natural laws that allowed it to run on its own from there. Some have compared it to viewing God as the "great watchmaker" who designed the universe as a perpetual watch or clock that could run on from there without needing his personal intervention in daily affairs of earthly life.
